Reflections on the rescue

Colombia’s successful rescue of 15 hostages (including three Americans) from the FARC terrorists continues to reverberate in the news. Today’s New York Times reports on the video we have posted below:

[T]he Colombian intelligence agents sent into the jungle, who numbered more than a dozen and included at least one woman, fooled the guerrillas into believing that they were part of a polyglot humanitarian mission intended to transfer the captives elsewhere in the country at the request of a senior FARC commander.

The rescuers included an agent pretending to be Italian, another supposed to be from the Middle East and a third who performed his role as an Australian so convincingly, according to Mr. Santos, that he invoked the spirit of Crocodile Dundee.

Even the video itself was part of the ruse, shot by two agents pretending to be television journalists.

Michael Barone reflects on the rescue operation, while several editorials call on congressional Democrats to get serious about the pending free trade agreement with Colombia. These editorials pick up Barone’s point that the “trade pact has been caught up in the usual election year political fray with many Democrats and their presidential nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, opposed to it. That opposition now looks both foolish and churlish.” Among the editiorials that demand reading are those of the Washington Post and Investors Business Daily.